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¶ … American history is strongly embedded in the consciousness of the U.S. population. They place great emphasis on the arrival of the pilgrims on the Newfoundland, the colonization and the eventual gaining of independence from the British rule.
The Americans take great pride in their history and continue to emphasize on the values which sat at the foundation of the country, such as freedom and democracy. But the American children tend to know less and less about American history. The educational system is focused on presenting facts and data which are important in history, but which do not interest the children. William Bruce Wheeler, Susan Becker and Lorri Glover (2011) take a generally different approach and argue that an important change in the history teaching process should be represented by the stimulation of student imagination and thinking process.
The history subject in public schools is focused on revealing crucial events and personalities in the history of the country, such as the role of the United States in the Second World War or the presidency of J.F. Kennedy. The history textbooks discuss political decisions and important moments in time. But to young children, and even to adolescents, these discussions often seem tedious and uninteresting.
In such a setting then, a question is being raised regarding the nature of the history lessons to be taught in school. More specifically, what should public school textbooks teach pupils about history? And who should make this decision?
According to the three authors, it would be a useful approach for textbooks in the public system to still focus on the important facts and decisions, but to be more clear in presenting the setting in which those decisions were made, and the forces which drove the decision makers towards them. And furthermore, it would be important for the textbooks to stimulate imagination by asking pupils to try and make the decisions by themselves, or to consider what would have happened had the authorities of the time implemented a different course of action.
"What should happen to the defeated South? Should the states of the former Confederacy be permitted to take their pre-war places in the Union as quickly and smoothly as possible, with minimum concessions to their northern conquerors? Or should the United States insist on a more drastic reconstruction of the South" (Wheeler, Becker and Glover, p.306,…
Reference:
Wheeler, W.B., Becker, S., Glover, L., 2011, Discovering the American past: a look at the evidence, 7th edition, Cengage Learning
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